During oral arguments, Justice Samuel Alito compared the case to that of Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian university in South Carolina. The Supreme Court ruled in 1983 the school was not entitled to a tax-exempt status if it barred interracial marriage.

Here is an exchange between Alito and Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., arguing for the same-sex couples on behalf of the Obama administration.

Justice Alito: Well,in the Bob Jones case, the Court held that a college was not entitled to tax­-exempt status if it opposed interracial marriage or interracial dating. So would the same apply to a university or a college if it opposed same­-sex marriage?

General Verrilli: You know, ­­I don’t think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics, but it’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is­­ it is going to be an issue.

"I don't think I can answer that question without knowing more specifics..."?!? My goodness, wasn't it only yesterday (OK, Monday) I read this tribute to the plaintiff's counsel in the NY Times?

WASHINGTON — In the months leading to Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments on same-sex marriage, teams of gay rights lawyers and their allies have held countless strategy sessions, drafted scores of briefs and participated in intense moot courts.

Their relentless preparation has two goals. One is to win. The other is to win big.

And it is not as if this question came utterly out of the blue - Ross Douthat is masterfully insightful, but he also puts his idea in print, and he (no doubt among others) floated this "Bob Jones" question a while back.

From which I infer that some version of this question was expected and some version of "I'd rather not speculate" was the preferred response. I further infer that the planitiffs have no intention of going on record today with a restrictive view of the limits of gay marriage rights; surely some factions within their coalition have every hope of going after Big Religion, ASAP.

With the further disclaimer that I am not a high priced attorney with months of prep under my belt, here is my instant response: in the case of a ban on inter-racial dating and marriage, Bob Jones University would have found very little mainstream religious support for their view. On the other hand, at this moment in time there is mainstream religious opposition to gay marriage.

So, in balancing the rights of a religious outlier like Bob Jones U against the governmental goal of promoting racial equality, one could imagine the court decision we got (which was 8-1). On the other hand, a different balance might strike a court as appropriate if the religious view was more widespread. Right now there are six Roman Catholic justices - won't some of them defend their Church?

But defend them from what, exactly? It is not as if colleges perform marriages, or are opposed to people living with unrelated member of the same gender (the term is "roommates").

Ross Douthat stretches a bit in looking for an issue:

1) Should religious colleges whose rules or honor codes orcovenants explicitly ask students and/or teachers to refrain from sex outside of heterosexual wedlock eventually lose their accreditation unless they change the policy to accommodate gay relationships? At the very least, should they lose their tax-exempt status, as Bob Jones University did over its ban on interracial dating?

Brigham Young is one of the linked schools, and FWIW, they made news in 2011 for booting one of their star basketball players based on his relationship with his girlfriend. However, other issues might include benefits of access to married couples housing:

2) What about the status of religious colleges and schools or non-profits that don’t have such official rules about student or teacher conduct, but nonetheless somehow instantiate or at least nod to a traditional view of marriage at some level — in the content of their curricula, the design of their benefit package, the rules for their wedding venues, their denominational affiliation? Should their tax-exempt status be reconsidered?

I would guess that a suitable test case will be difficult yet inevitable.

April 28, 2015

And the Clintons love them right back, episode bajillion in a gazillion part series.

Via HotAir, we have yet another story detailing the close relationship between Goldman Sachs and the Clintons. And as with every story surrounding the Clintons, there is an appearance of unsavoriness on the surface, with hardly-in-doubt ethical line-crossing lurking just beneath.

Goldman Sachs paid former President Bill Clinton $200,000 to deliver a speech in the spring of 2011, several months before the investment banking giant began lobbying the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, federal records reviewed by International Business Times show.

If nothing else, let's reserve some measure of respect at how much of a pro these Clintons are with the quids and quos. Besides, being the champion of everyday Americans doesn't come cheap, you know.

Pressing onward:

State Department records show that Bill Clinton’s $200,000 Goldman Sachs speech was delivered April 11, 2011, to “approximately 250 high level clients and investors” at a United Nations dining room in New York.

In federal disclosure documents, the Duberstein Group is listed as lobbying the Clinton State Department on behalf of Goldman Sachs between July and September 2011. Goldman Sachs paid the Duberstein Group $100,000 during that time.

Those records show that the firm was specifically lobbying the department on “proposed legislation” linked to a series of budget bills. One bill continued congressional authorization for the Export-Import Bank, a government-backed lender whose financing was critical for the prospects of a company in which Goldman owned a stake. The Duberstein Group did not respond to questions about its precise interests in the legislation at issue.

The original budget bill was introduced in July and did not include an extension of the Export-Import Bank, but the bank reauthorization was added in late September, during the same period Goldman was lobbying the State Department on the bill.

Well, sure, but unless a gun is found in the Scooby van emitting smoke, and Hillary's hands test positive for gun residue - Team Clinton will insist that there's no there, there, and it's all just the work of people who hate Hillary because she's a woman dwelling on what really is nothing more than optically unfortunate coincidences. Or something.

However, veering back to reality (and switching metaphors) everyone knows - and I mean everyone - that the smoke wafting about originated from a fire kept just out of view.

We'll end with a little fun with numbers when it comes to the Clintons and Goldman:

Since leaving office, President Clinton has received $1.35 million from the bank for eight speeches, the Washington Post reported. Two years ago, Hillary Clinton, having left the Obama administration, gave two speeches at Goldman Sachs events in the span of a week, Mother Jones magazine reported.

Goldman Sachs is really Ready for Hillary.

IS THAT A PROMISE OR A THREAT: I really do intend on putting up something non-Clinton related. Some day.

April 27, 2015

This is probably not as well-known or oft talked about as it should be: during the period in which Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, at no time was a permanent, Senate-confirmed Inspector General in place as required by the Inspector General Act of 1978.

There shall be at the head of each Office an Inspector General who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of integrity and demonstrated ability in accounting, auditing, financial analysis, law, management analysis, public administration, or investigations.

The acting Inspector General for the State department during this time was Harold W. Geisel. In a 2013 Wall Street Journal article, former Defense Department Inspector General Joseph Schmitz tackled the issues facing Geisel's appointment and tenure:

Mr. Geisel was not eligible to be the inspector general because of an explicit, congressionally mandated safeguard for IG independence that rules out "a career member of the Foreign Service" from ever being "appointed Inspector General of the Department of State."

That is one reason why, as Mr. Geisel's de facto "acting" IG role at State extended into late 2010, the nonprofit Project On Government Oversight complained about this apparent violation of law in a Nov. 18 letter to President Obama. The letter also noted the personal friendship between Mr. Geisel and State's undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy, who was at the time "responsible for the people, resources facilities, technology, consular affairs, and security of the Department of State," according to his official biography.

Mr. Kennedy's long and close association with the person effectively responsible for inspecting and reviewing the department's performance wasn't the only troubling issue for many who knew and respected both men. As a group of "very concerned employees" of the State Department made clear in a letter released to Congress in January 2008—when Ambassador Geisel's appointment as "acting IG" was rumored—the ambassador was so well known as a member of the State Department family that it did not sound like a good idea to have one of their own in charge of investigating, auditing and assessing them.

Mr. Geisel's honesty and dedication were not at question. As the Benghazi whistleblower scandal unfolded on Capitol Hill this spring, however, the last Senate-confirmed inspector general of the State Department, Mr. Krongard, told me in an email that while Mr. Geisel is "an able man . . . his status significantly undercuts his authority and effectiveness within [the office of inspector general], within the Department, in the IG community, and on Capitol Hill. His status is like attaching a sign on his back that says 'Ignore Me, I am temporary.' "

In 2011, Jeanette Franzel from the GAO testified before Congress on the status of a 2007 report that addressed the concern that the State Department's Office of the Inspector General lacked independence:

In 2007 GAO reported on concerns with the independence and effectiveness of the Department of State Inspector General (State OIG). GAO was asked to provide testimony on the issues we raised and the status of recommendations made to the State OIG in that report. This testimony focuses on the importance of auditor and IG independence, GAO’s prior concerns with the State OIG’s independence and effectiveness, and the status of OIG actions to address GAO’s recommendations.

The GAO had prescribed measures to correct the problems, which included the following:

(1) develop a succession-planning policy for the appointment of individuals to head the State IG office in an acting capacity that provides for independent coverage between IG appointments and also to prohibit career Foreign Service officers and other department managers from heading the State OIG in an acting capacity

Career foreign service officer Geisel was appointed acting Inspector General in June of 2008. Aha! It was Bush's Fault!

In her closing observations, Fanzel stated:

The mission of the State OIG is critical to providing independent and objective oversight of the State Department and identifying mismanagement of taxpayer dollars. While the IG Act provides each IG with the ability to exercise judgment in the use of protections to independence specified in the act, the ultimate success or failure of an IG office is largely determined by the individual IG placed in that office and that person’s ability to maintain personal, external, and organizational independence both in fact and appearance, while reporting the results of the office’s work to both the agency head and to the Congress. An IG who lacks independence cannot effectively fulfill the full range of requirements for this office.

Hillary served as Secretary of State at a time when there was no permanent, Senate-confirmed Inspector General, and in which the acting Inspector General served in a weakened position. If Hillary wanted to operate using questionable practices - scratch the if, because we know she did operate thusly - she was allowed to operate in an environment that made doing so more likely to go undetected.

The State Department went over 2,000 days without an actual Inspector General. The wheels of government grind slowly, right? However, Hillary Clinton stepped down as Secretary of State on February 1, 2013, and Obama nominated Steve Linick as State Inspector General on June 27, 2013. It's amazing how quickly the wheels of government can sometime spin!

If Obama had wanted to hold his Secretary of State accountable, he would have ensured a strong OIG led by an Inspector General who was capable.

Whatever more we find out about Hillary's activities while Secretary of State, and chances are we still have some real doozies to find out about, Obama aided and abetted her activities through neglecting to appoint an Inspector General.

Over at The Federalist, Mollie Hemingway took a look at the question - over a month ago, mind you - regarding an Algeria gift to the Clinton Foundation. She compares that to the fines levied against US pharmaceutical companies for donating to a Polish charity:

In 2011 and 2012, the Obama administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission levied large penalties against U.S. pharmaceutical companies for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. These included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly and Company. Among the charges was making donations to a charitable foundation in Poland.

That charitable foundation was run by an official with a regional health ministry who had the authority to make pharmaceutical purchasing decisions. The charitable foundation was legitimate and the foundation’s work was for a good cause. But the U.S. government found that the donation still had a corrupt purpose.

Eli Lilly ultimately parted with more than $29M in a settlement with the SEC over the charges. Keep on reading at the link where Hemingway has much more, including quotes from the head of the SEC’s enforcement division, Andrew Ceresney (not directly on the matter of Hillary, but about the Eli Lilly case).

Meanwhile, Richard Cassin, the editor of the FCPA Blog, has now taken a look at the matter as a result of the New York Times article that came out yesterday. His take centers on Bill Clinton:

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits giving or promising to give anything of value to a foreign official to obtain or retain business. Individuals who violate the FCPA can be jailed for up to five years. A copy of the statute is here (pdf).

Did Bill Clinton give Nursultan Nazarbayev "anything of value" by supporting his bid to head an international elections monitoring group? The Times called Clinton's support "a propaganda coup" for the Kazakh president. That suggests lots of reputational value to Nazarbayev.

Much, much more at the link. But before anyone starts imagining big fines being levied or even Hillary in an orange pantjumpsuit, it is worth noting that Cassin makes a similar point in several different ways:

There haven't been any FCPA enforcement actions based entirely on the giving of non-financial benefits. [...]

The FCPA has never been used to prosecute apparent political favors, such as those described in the New York Times story. [...]

No FCPA enforcement action has been based on an alleged business nexus as indirect as Giustra's contributions to the Clinton Foundation.

And while "there's a first time for everything" is a well-known phrase, it is also well-known that nobody does scandal consequence avoidance like the Clintons.

So while we are not holding our breath, let's at least Keep Hope Alive.

THIS IS SOOOO LAST CENTURY: The FCPA was passed in 1977. But in 1998, the US partnered with an array of other countries under the umbrella of the OECD to put in place a more global structure to target international corruption/bribery. The US was previously at a disadvantage because other countries willfully engaged in bribery and/or allowed their companies to do so, where US companies could not.

The United States has led the effort to curb international bribery. We have long believed bribery is inconsistent with democratic values, such as good governance and the rule of law. It is also contrary to basic principles of fair competition and harmful to efforts to promote economic development.

Well. The ideas of democratic values, fair competition and economic development don't seem to be worth the paper they're written on pixels used to display them when they come in conflict with a Clinton making money. Oh, and the whole rule of law thing. That's not much of an impediment either, apparently.

April 23, 2015

We'll direct you to Ed at Hot Air for some commentary on the piece - spoiler alert, there might be something untoward as it relates to the Clintons. Let's highlight this graph:

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.

Indeed, that something Clinton-related is described as having "ethical challenges" has moved way beyond dog-bites-man to something more akin to dog-wags-tail.

IT IS ONLY A METAPHOR: I am not saying former President Clinton is chasing tail. Besides, in terms of a metaphor, a dog is usually described as chasing his own tail, not that of others.

THE DOG IS NOW LICKING ITSELF: In what will surely surprise no one, there may be something hinky about the Clinton Foundation's tax returns over the past several years. Not disclosing donations from foreign governments? Typo.

Well, yes. For a bit of Sunday afternoon quarterbacking, let's excerpt this from March 22 2011, by Adam Garfinkle of The American Interest:

As noted, there is a regional and tribal element to the fight in Libya. It is unlikely that the Benghazi-based rebels could by themselves establish stable control over the whole country. It is almost as unlikely that the Tripolitanian tribes could re-establish firm control over Cyrenaica. Qaddafi managed the feat through a combination of patronage, terror and cooptation. That will be a very hard act to follow in the wake of so much bloodletting. We are therefore looking into the maw of a Libya that may well be divided, in the throes of some kind of protracted, at least low-level civil war, and that could very easily produce an insurgency spilling over the Egyptian and Tunisian borders—complete with refugees, the usual dysfunctional NGO triage operations and all the rest. And in due course, if the fractious mess lasts long enough, there is a reasonable prospect that al-Qaeda will find a way to establish a foothold amid the mayhem.

Who will want to send in peacekeepers to baby-sit a Libya that looks like that? Who’ll want to go to the UN to get the job authorized? The African Union?

Now, given that this sort of problem is foreseeable, and that it was also foreseeable before the cruise missiles started flying on Saturday, it stands to reason that a responsible, serious government will have thought about all this in advance, and come up with some plan for the post-combat “Phase IV” of the Libyan War, right? Not on your life; the President and his war council almost certainly have not even begun to think about this sort of thing, because they’re still in denial that it could happen. This is, after all, just a limited, humanitarian mission as far as they’re concerned. They don’t realize it yet, but these guys are on a path to make even Donny Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks look good—and you thought that was impossible.

Well, yes, that piece hit on refugees, terror groups, and an ongoing civil war in a failed state. And FWIW, I found it sufficiently persuasive to link to it back in the day, and recycle the main themes a few days later. The point being, these arguments were made in real time and ignored by the Administration, including our former Secretary of State.

As to the analogy to Iraq, well, the Colin Powell aphorism was that if you break it, you own it. Why don't Barack and Hillary own Libya? And can the Republicans let go of Benghazi and talk about the much larger failure of judgment involved in displacing Qadaffi with no credible plan to replace him?

The guy who got elected on 'No More Iraqs' gave us a new Iraq (and lost the original one!). With Hillary at his side encouragingour involvement.

April 20, 2015

2015 marks the first season in 20 years that the New York Yankees roster does not feature Derek Jeter. Jeter played his entire career with the Yankees and was the team captain from 2003 until he retired last year. He had a hall of fame career and was perhaps best known as one of the most clutch players the game has seen. Helping lead the Yankees to five World Series titles, Jeter was beloved by many in New York and by Yankees fans everywhere. Even if one hated Jeter as an opponent, any true fan of the game respected the way he played. Jeter was the face of the Yankees and carried that role with a level of class that any team would love to have.

Alternately, after a one year suspension due to PED use, the Yankees roster once again boasts Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod has gotten off to a hot start in the first few weeks of the season. This will almost certainly be a milestone-laden year for A-Rod, barring injury (or another suspension).

Earlier this season, Rodriguez passed Jeter for ninth place in all-time runs scored in Major League Baseball history. 21 more runs and Rodriguez will pass Stan Musial for eighth place all-time.

Rodriguez is 17 RBI away from passing Lou Gehrig and Barry Bonds to move into third all-time in that category.

Rodriguez is two home runs from catching and three from passing Willie Mays for fourth place in all-time home runs.

Rodriguez is 49 hits away from becoming the 29th player in MLB history to reach the 3,000 hit club. Assuming a full season, A-Rod should pass Craig Biggio to reach 20th place in all-time hits.

Now, because this is A-Rod and this is the Yankees, there is a catch to all these milestones. That is - there is language in his contract that triggers bonuses for reaching milestones, and as of right now, the Yankees and Rodriguez don't exactly see eye to eye on which milestones trigger what bonuses. The issue may end up with the Yankees refusing to pay, and Rodriguez filing a grievance with the league to try and force them to pay.

Well, the Yankees are never not entertaining, I guess.

In any event, Derek Jeter is gone and Alex Rodriguez is taking over as the face of the New York Yankees.

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday directed his diplomats to use “creative negotiations” to bridge a sharp divide with Iran over the fate of sanctions if it agrees to curb its nuclear program, signaling flexibility in hopes of keeping a tentative agreement from unraveling.

Iranian leaders have insisted in recent days that the punishing sanctions be lifted as soon as a written accord is signed, a position that the country’s foreign minister reinforced on Friday. Mr. Obama did not repeat past American assertions that sanctions would be removed only in phases as Tehran follows through on obligations to scale back its nuclear facilities.

Oh for heaven's sake...

Instead, Mr. Obama suggested that negotiators seek a solution that would seem “more acceptable” to Iran’s political constituencies, while preserving leverage to force the government to abide by the deal. Rather than the timing and structure of sanctions relief, he said his priority was creating a system for reimposing the punitive measures if Iran is caught cheating.

“How sanctions are lessened, how we snap back sanctions if there’s a violation, there are a lot of different mechanisms and ways to do that,” Mr. Obama said at a White House news conference alongside the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi. The negotiators, Mr. Obama said, need to “find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable.”

Wait a second - the hardliners on our side are irresponsible nutjobs but the hardliners on their side need to be placated? I had a friend insist to me that Iran was desperate for this deal because sanctions are crushing their economy, but he couldn't quite explain to me why it seemed as if Obama, not the Ayatollah, was desperate for a deal. Other than the obvious legacy/Nobel II argument, of course.

As to the gist, please - here in Reality, once sanctions are lifted there will be many, many moneyed interests intent on keeping them lifted. Nothing will be "snapping back" except Obama's head in surprise when multiple European and Asian companies and countries put jobs and profit ahead of whinging from Israel and the US about obscure, hard-to-verify cheating by Iran.

Yeah, go ahead - score me as "Undecided" on this Iran deal. No, seriously - I can't decide if Obama is sincere but incompetent or a shameless liar who is incompetent. And normally I make these tough calls every day...

IGNORE THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN... White House aides scrambled to explain that Obama was simply enjoying his own mellifluous tones, not changing US policy:

As for Mr. Obama, his aides said he was not trying to signal a change in policy with his comments at the news conference.

“He was emphasizing snapback” sanctions that could be reapplied quickly “and the fact that this will be a subject of intense negotiation,” said a senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity to parse the president’s words. “But we’ve always made clear the principle that sanctions relief will have to be phased and in response to Iranian actions, and that continues to be the case.”

In an 'R U Kidding Me?' lapse of ethnic sensitivity the Dead Tree Times runs this headline covering a Marco Rubio swing through New Hampshire:

"A Greasy Hand for Marco Rubio as He Visits New Hampshire"

That headline has since been amended online to "Marco Rubio Swings Through New Hampshire" but it lives on in the Times url (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/18/us/politics/a-greasy-hand-for-marco-rubio-as-he-visits-new-hampshire.html) and elsewhere on the net.

Fortunately, since Rubio is a Republican sensitive libs won't be leaping from ledges. But my goodness - can't the Times even pretend that language that would be deplored as racist if applied to a proper progressive will also be considered inappropriate when applied to a Republican? Where are the Sensitivity Police when you need them?

Since you ask, the greasy hand is actually part of a cute campaign vignette buried at the back of the story:

Mr. Rubio still has a bit to learn about welding, though. Donning protective plastic glasses, the senator marveled at the equipment as he toured the [Manchester Community College] college’s welding wing.

“That’s going through it like butter,” he said.

“It hasn’t even touched it yet,” said Chris Scales, 32, a student and a Coast Guard veteran, who was demonstrating a machine.

The gist - why did Obama lie about his willingness to publicly recognize the Armenian genocide?

Last Sunday, Pope Francis showed moral courage in openly calling for recognition of “the first genocide of the twentieth century.” Turkey, run by the increasingly brutal dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, immediately recalled its ambassador, as befits a bully.

Why won’t President Obama recognize the genocide, especially since he promised as a presidential candidate that he would do so?

CNN’s chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper captured the president’s failure succinctly: “For the sixth year in a row President Barack Obama has broken his promise to the Armenian community, made when seeking their votes as a senator and a presidential candidate, to use the word ‘genocide’ to describe the massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. He did this in deference to the government of Turkey, which – historical revisionism aside – the Obama administration regards as a more crucial ally.”

President Obama won’t recognize the genocide of the Armenian people for fear of provoking the Turkish tyrant.

Jake Tapper was writing in April 2014, so Obama can roll a lucky seven any day now (April 24 is the international commemoration day). The situation is fraught because, in addition to the recent pronouncement by the pope, the European Parliament has (again) chimed in:

ISTANBUL — The European Parliament adopted a resolution Wednesday commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide and urged Turkey to recognize that event.

Turkey has pledged to disregard the European Parliament, the European Union’s legislature, which has passed similar measures twice before.

But this one was particularly likely to add fuel to the historical debate over the characterization of the genocide, which began in 1915 and took place over several years during World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. The debate gained momentum on Sunday after Pope Francis referred to the event as “the first genocide of the 20th century.”

Obama now has his own pre-election rhetoric plus political cover from the pope and the patriarchy of Europe. But wait! A plot twist...

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s prime minister on Friday accused Europe of showing signs of racism after the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on his government to recognize the mass killings of Armenians in the collapsing Ottoman Empire as genocide.

Although Turkey vowed to disregard the resolution, government officials have lashed out at the European Parliament, the legislature of the European Union, accusing it of contriving obstacles to relations with Turkey. But the remarks by the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, went further.

“The European Parliament should not take decisions that would result in hatred toward a certain religion or ethnic group if it wants to contribute to peace,” Mr. Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara. “This issue is now beyond the Turkish-Armenian issue. It’s a new reflection of the racism in Europe.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Republican Party’s 2008 Presidential nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, has publicly and properly recognized the Armenian Genocide, breaking with his longstanding silence on this human rights issue and, in the process, dramatically underscoring the post-election retreat by his campaign opponent, President Barack Obama, from his high-profile pledge to properly condemn and commemorate this crime, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“I believe that genocide was committed against the Armenian people, and I think there is ample documentation of that,” Sen. McCain told the Voice of America Georgian language service in an interview focusing on the Caucasus as well as Armenia-Turkey relations.

Interesting - so many more questions for the press to not ask Obama or especially Hillary. For the record, Candidate Hillary in 2008 matched Barack in the empty promises area, then backed her boss as Secretary of State; this is from Jan 2012:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the US “opens a door that is a very dangerous one to go through.” This is the same Hillary Clinton who, four years ago, pledged that she would recognize the Genocide as President of the United States.

Responding to a question from a participant of a Town Hall Meeting on Thursday, who asked why the US does not recognize the Genocide, Clinton characterized the Armenian Genocide as an historical issue and not a political one.

“I think it’s fair to say that this has always been viewed, and I think properly so, as a matter of historical debate and conclusions rather than political. And I think that is the right posture for the United States Government to be in, because whatever the terrible event might be or the high emotions that it represents, to try to use government power to resolve historical issues, I think, opens a door that is a very dangerous one to go through. So the issue is a very emotional one; I recognize that and I have great sympathy for those who are just so incredibly passionate about it,” Clinton told the audience.

And the response from those pesky (but passionate!) genocide non-deniers:

WASHINGTON, DC–The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) sharply criticized remarks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who on Jan. 26 dismissed the murder of 1.5 million Armenians as a “historical debate,” and argued that U.S. affirmation of this crime would open a “dangerous door.”

“It’s a sad spectacle to see Secretary Clinton hiding behind cynical appeals to scholars–the overwhelming majority of whom have already spoken forcefully against Turkey’s denials of the Armenian Genocide–to divert attention from President Obama’s, Vice President Biden’s, or her own promises to properly recognize this crime and, more broadly, to divert attention from the White House’s failure to meet its moral obligation to stand up against a foreign government’s veto of our defense of human rights,” Hamparian said.

...

Clinton’s remarks are diametrically opposed to her statement issued almost four years ago, to the day, as a Senator. In this statement, she boasted that she was “alone among the presidential candidates” to have been a co-sponsor of the Armenian Genocide Resolution and pledged “as president, I will recognize the Armenian Genocide.” The statement went on to stress, “Our common morality and our nation’s credibility as a voice for human rights challenge us to ensure that the Armenian Genocide be recognized and remembered by the Congress and the president of the United States.”

Obama and Biden made equally clear and unequivocal statements regarding the U.S. affirmation of the Armenian Genocide during their years in the Senate and as candidates for the White House. “America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides. I intend to be that president,” said Obama in a Jan. 19, 2008 campaign statement. Biden explained his support for pending Armenian Genocide legislation to the LA Times Editorial Board in May 2007, as follows: “I support it, and the reason is simple: I have found in my experience that you cannot have a solid relationship with a country based on fiction. It occurred. It occurred.”

Yeah, yeah - if you like your genocide you can keep your genocide. FWIW, McCain followed an interesting path here - as a candidate, he was honest about what he would do as President (based on the flip-flops of Obama et al). Then, as a free agent he took a path that makes sense for an individual but *maybe* not for a country.

April 24 is the big day, so there is still plenty of time for Obama to check with the pollsters and fundraisers to see if he needs to evolve on this. Of course, Turkey is a key to Obama's plans for stability in the Middle East, so he might need to keep them on board to build on hismanysuccessesthere.

April 16, 2015

Noam Scheiber of the NY Times (Presumably part of the New Republic diaspora) is the latest to present progressive doublethink on the minimum-wage hiking Fight For 15:

In Test for Unions and Politicians, a Nationwide Protest on Pay

The protest by tens of thousands of low-wage workers, students and activists in more than 200 American cities on Wednesday is the most striking effort to date in a two-and-a-half-year-old labor-backed movement that is testing the ability of unions to succeed in an economy populated by easily replaceable service sector workers.

Labor has invested tens of millions of dollars in a campaign for a $15-an-hour minimum wage that goes beyond traditional workplace organizing, taking on a cause that has captured broad public support. But the movement is up against a hostile business sector sheltered by a decades-old federal labor law that makes it difficult for workers to directly confront the wealthy corporations that dominate the fast-food and hospitality industries.

Greedy corporations crushing the dreams of the common man. I wonder which side the NY Times editors take. No I don't:

Ms. Clinton has offered herself as a champion of “everyday Americans,” saying that “the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.” That view dovetails with the everyday reality of the protesters, who by and large work at big and profitable companies with highly-compensated executives, and yet do not make enough to live on.

...

Many Senate Democrats have signaled support for lifting the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020. But that is both low and slow. A credible raise must not only improve on today’s inadequate minimum, but restore it to a level that accounts for inflation in wages and prices over recent decades, as well as the growth in labor productivity. Simply raising the hourly minimum in line with wage and price inflation would put it at about $11 today; adjusting it for productivity growth would put it at about $18.

Not to wax Churchillian, but never has so obvious a point been made by so many with such little result as the following: waving in more legal and illegal unskilled workers from the rest of the world depresses the wages of the unskilled in this country. Even Paul Krugman admitted this at one time; if memory serves, he was taken to the progressive woodshed and has avoided that topic ever since.

Well. The progressive community and the NY Times (yeah, yeah, I repeat myself) will be engaging in contortions for the next two years as they spend three days a week decrying the haters who won't raise wages for the unskilled and another three days a week deploring the haters who won't wave in more legal and illegal unskilled workers. (The seventh day will be spent denouncing the Religious Right). As an example of these contortions, let's flash back to this Oct 2014 Times puff piece denouncing the Republican Senate agenda and pushing for the bipartisan Senate bill on immigration reform:

Missing from both Republican lists are two pillars of Mr. Obama’s agenda that many economists consider important for expanding the labor force and promoting long-run growth.

One is significantly higher spending for infrastructure. The International Monetary Fund recently called for such spending, saying it would pay off in broader economic growth.

The other is an overhaul of immigration laws. Despite business pressure to provide a path to citizenship for the millions here illegally, and to admit more foreigners with skills, Republicans’ opposition has only hardened in this campaign. A bipartisan Senate-passed bill on immigration would increase economic growth by 3.3 percent in a decade and save $175 billion by then, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.

If you believe the Times that bipartisan bill sounds like an angels choir singing a song. But let's see what else the CBO had to say (and let's not imagine the CBO tried to bury it, even though the Times did):

S. 744 would boost economic output—CBO projects—by 3.3 percent in 2023 and by 5.4 percent in 2033. Employment, investment, and productivity would increase, but average wages would be less than under current law until 2025.

Somehow the Times missed the lead - the Senate bill would REDUCE average wages and raise unemployment. And what mysterious economic force led the CBO to that conclusion?

Employment and Wages. The supply of labor in the economy would increase primarily because the legislation would loosen or eliminate annual limits on various categories of permanent and temporary immigration. Enacting the bill would, in CBO’s view, increase the U.S. population by about 10 million people (about 3 percent) in 2023 and by about 16 million people (about 4 percent) in 2033.

CBO and JCT expect that new immigrants of working age would participate in the labor force at a higher rate, on average, than other people in that age range in the United States. Relative to CBO’s projections under current law, enacting the bill would increase the size of the labor force by about 6 million (about 3½ percent) in 2023 and by about 9 million (about 5 percent) in 2033, CBO and JCT estimate. Employment would increase as the labor force expanded, because the additional population would add to demand for goods and services and, in turn, to the demand for labor. However, temporary imbalances in the skills and occupations demanded and supplied in the labor market, as well as other factors, would cause the unemployment rate to be slightly higher for several years than projected under current law.

The increase in average wages for the entire labor force in 2025 and later years relative to average wages under current law would occur primarily because the bill would boost the productivity of labor and capital (as discussed below). However, not all workers would experience those effects equally. The legislation would particularly increase the number of workers with lower or higher skills but would have less effect on the number of workers with average skills. As a result, the wages of lower- and higher-skilled workers would tend to be pushed downward slightly (by less than ½ percent) relative to the wages of workers with average skills.

Hmm, supply and demand. The link between increased immigration and lower unskilled wages remains mysterious (and utterly unreported) at the Times. FWIW, the word "immigration" does not appear in either the current Scheiber article or the accompanying editorial.

AND SINCE THIS IS A PROGRESSIVE FANTASY: Far be it from me to emphasize the intrusion of reality into the current progressive "Occupy McDonalds" fantasy, but even Mr. Scheiber could not bring himself to utterly ignore this awkward tidbit (so he buried it in unlucky paragraph thirteen):

Partly in response to the political shift as well as competitive pressure from tighter labor markets, several major employers of low-wage workers have moved to raised their base pay in recent months. Walmart, Target and McDonald’s have all announced plans to increase their minimum wage to or near $10, though for McDonald’s it would apply only to the roughly 10 percent of its workers employed directly by the company, not by its franchisees.

April 15, 2015

Camel: Uh-oh! Guess what day it is...Guess what day it is! Huh…anybody? Julie! Hey, guess what day it is! Ah come on, I know you can hear me. Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike… What day is it Mike? Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Leslie, guess what today is?

Leslie: It’s Tax Day.

Camel: Whoot Whaaaaaaat?

The 16th Amendment was adopted on February 3, 1913, when Delaware became the 36th state to vote for ratification. The 16th Amendment is written as follows:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

OK, there was "collective consent" obtained when 16th Amendment was ratified of course, so we'll get back on course (and out of the gutter). At the time, Tax Day was designated as March 1st. In 1918, tax day was moved to March 15th. And in 1955, it was moved to April 15th where it remains today.

There will come a day when today is not Wednesday, April 15th, but today is not that day. So get humping happy filing!

But how many times has Tax Day fallen on Hump Day, you ask? The answer is 15:

April 14, 2015

Most notably - 150 years ago on this day, Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

In 1818, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English Language.

In 1860, the first Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco.

In 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg, before sinking the next day.

In 1988, the Soviet Union signed an agreement pledging to withdraw all Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Last year on this day, Boko Haram abducted 276 school girls in Nigeria.

Eight years ago, the equivalent to today in terms of the presidential election calendar, the political outrage engulfing the nation was . . . missing government emails.

And today, Hillary bought a Masala Chai and a caramallow latte at a coffee house somewhere in Iowa, heroically connecting with everyday people in the first official stop in her historic campaign to break once and for all the ultimate glass ceiling and rightfully claim her throne.

April 12, 2015

Who will win this year's Masters is obviously yet to be decided. But we do know who came in last place. At the age of 63, Ben Crenshaw shot successive rounds of 91 and 85, failing to make the cut for weekend play in what is his final Masters.

However, Ben continues to have a big impact on this year's tournament through the relationship both he and his long-time caddy Carl Jackson have forged with current leader, Jordan Spieth.

As Republican presidential hopefuls trot out their policy agendas — which always involve cutting taxes on the rich while slashing benefits for the poor and middle class — some real new thinking is happening on the other side of the aisle. Suddenly, it seems, many Democrats have decided to break with Beltway orthodoxy, which always calls for cuts in “entitlements.” Instead, they’re proposing that Social Security benefits actually be expanded.

This is a welcome development in two ways. First, the specific case for expanding Social Security is quite good. Second, and more fundamentally, Democrats finally seem to be standing up to antigovernment propaganda and recognizing the reality that there are some things the government does better than the private sector.

He goes for an early laugh with this:

Like all advanced nations, America mainly relies on private markets and private initiatives to provide its citizens with the things they want and need, and hardly anyone in our political discourse would propose changing that. The days when it sounded like a good idea to have the government directly run large parts of the economy are long past.

Huh? The ongoing cries for single-payer health coverage (which Krugman supports) don't represent a Big Government footprint on a huge part of the economy? And on that topic, when did we solve the Veterans Administration problem? Krugman, in an earlier paean to Big Government, had described the VA as follows:

Some still think of the V.A. as a decrepit institution, which it was in the Reagan and Bush I years. But thanks to reforms begun under Bill Clinton, it’s now providing remarkably high-quality health care at remarkably low cost.

And there’s another major example of government superiority: providing retirement security.

He explains that people don't save enough and they pay too much for their financial advice (Paul Krugman, closet Boglehead!). The answer... oh, there is no need for a spoiler alert - it's time to expand Social Security!

And in the real world of retirement, Social Security is a shining example of a system that works. It’s simple and clean, with low operating costs and minimal bureaucracy. It provides older Americans who worked hard all their lives with a chance of living decently in retirement, without requiring that they show an inhuman ability to think decades ahead and be investment whizzes as well. The only problem is that the decline of private pensions, and their replacement with inadequate 401(k)-type plans, has left a gap that Social Security isn’t currently big enough to fill. So why not make it bigger?

I am confident that Democratic plans to expand Social Security have nothing to do with an increase in forced savings by the working class to fund their own retirement and everything to do with higher taxes on "the rich" (i.e., earners over the Social Security cap of $117,000) to pay enhanced benefits to the more numerous non-rich. There are votes to be bought and Democrats to buy them!

Also in the real world are the many state and local pension plans that are run by, well, governments, and are dramatically (one might even say critically) underfunded.

Since Times readers often enjoy two papers in one, lets cut to a Times guest piece from Aug 4, 2013:

A Plan to Avert the Pension Crisis

By RICHARD J. RIORDAN and TIM RUTTEN

LOS ANGELES — IT isn’t politically feasible for Washington to bail out Detroit, but President Obama and Congress must step in to avert the worst fiscal collapse in urban American history.

California’s giant state pension fund, the world’s sixth largest, continues to assume it will earn 7.75 percent on its investments, even though its actual returns have been less than half that for a decade. Los Angeles continues to project similar annual yields on its investments, when the actual average returns are closer to 5 percent. As a consequence, the city’s unfunded pension obligations probably will grow to around $15 billion over the next four years.

According to Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, Illinois’s net public-employee pension liabilities now amount to $133 billion, or 241 percent of the state’s total annual revenues; in Connecticut, 190 percent; in New Jersey, 137 percent; and in New York, 17 percent.

This is news to roughly no one other than Paul Krugman. And don't even ask about the generous (but unsustainable) public pension plans in Europe.

Government excels at making popular promises for benefits tomorrow that won't be funded until the day after tomorrow, at the earliest.

April 09, 2015

Former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which they raised a number of significant questions about Obama's much self-heralded beginning of a plan to determine a potential decision to propose a perhaps binding agreement to produce a framework for . . . okay I'm lost here, let's just call it ObamaPeace.

Over at the Washington Free Beacon, we are treated to an exchange between AP reporter Matt Lee and State Department spokesperson Marie Harf related to the op-ed:

Harf sparred with AP reporter Matt Lee, interrupting him several times as he tried to get a reaction to the op-ed from the State Department.

“Really, you don’t think it’s nuanced?” Harf asked Lee.

“Is there a question or are you just commenting?” Harf replied. “I’m not going to go line by line.”

The Obama administration has repeatedly challenged critics of the deal to offer an alternative. This response has been used to rebut Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Republicans, foreign leaders, and even some from his own party.

“I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives. I heard a lot of–sort of a lot of big words and big thoughts in that piece, and certainly there is a place for that. But I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently,” Harf said.

The good news for Harf is that Obama's words on this point are not all that big - only two three-syllable words in fact, so hopefully she can follow along. The bad news is the words are a rebuke to Harf's response to the Kissinger-Schultz op-ed.

Don’t tell me words don’t matter. I have a dream – just words words? We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal – just words? We have nothing to fear but fear itself – just words? Just speeches? Don’t tell me words don’t matter!

Well, yes - that's 2008 Obama, of course. Obama of 2015 thinks Marie Harf is sufficiently expert enough to be one of the leading spokespersons for his administration.

April 08, 2015

...if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world and reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama’s doing. I think his actions are constituted in my mind those of the worst president we've ever had.

April 06, 2015

Tom Friedman talks Iranian strategery with President Obama. When Friedman feels obliged to devote multiple voluminous paragraphs to the President's passionate commitment to Israel, it pretty much tells you that the President lacks that commitment. Reading the President's remarks in defense of Israel is like reading an explanation of his opposition to gay marriage circa 2011 - you know he is reading the script prepared by his pollsters and fundraisers but you also know his heart is not in it. Regrettably, Tom Friedman was far too polite to ask the President whether a direct Iranian threat against Israel would represent a "red line".

And on to the strategery! Obama delivers the wisdom of the man who assured us that he was leaving a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant" Iraq in 2011. Or the guy who described ISIS as the junior varsity. Away we go:

[Obama] added that America, with its overwhelming power, needs to have the self-confidence to take some calculated risks to open important new possibilities — like trying to forge a diplomatic deal with Iran that, while permitting it to keep some of its nuclear infrastructure, forestalls its ability to build a nuclear bomb for at least a decade, if not longer.

“We are powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk. And that’s the thing ... people don’t seem to understand,” the president said. “You take a country like Cuba. For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren’t that many risks for us. It’s a tiny little country. It’s not one that threatens our core security interests, and so [there’s no reason not] to test the proposition. And if it turns out that it doesn’t lead to better outcomes, we can adjust our policies. The same is true with respect to Iran, a larger country, a dangerous country, one that has engaged in activities that resulted in the death of U.S. citizens, but the truth of the matter is: Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us. ... You asked about an Obama doctrine. The doctrine is: We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities.”

Well. I am heartened to learn that Iran won't be invading the beaches of Miami or Long Island any time soon.

But when did Iran embrace the lesson that "they cannot fight us"? Was it in 1983, when Iranian-backed terrorists bombed the US Marines barracks and ran us out of Lebanon? Hezbollah is still a dominant force in Lebanon and the US is still absent, which may or may not be news to Barack.

Or perhaps the mullahs realized they can't fight the US when Iranian-backed Shiite militias made Iraq ungovernable and led to the rise of "peace at any price" candidates such as, well, Barack Obama. The US is still out of Iraq and Iran is still in, which may or may not be news to Barack.

Or perhaps Iran realized the futility of opposing the will of the US when Obama famously declared in 2011 that Syrian strongman Assad "must go". Of course Assad, backed by Iran, hasn't actually gone yet, but any day now! Or not.

Iran has no intention of fighting the US directly. They are also confident that the US, at least under Barack, has no intention of fighting them as they continue their bid to expand their regional influence.

April 03, 2015

Peter Baker of the NY Times provides an analysis of Obama's Iranian adventure. Some highlights:

A Foreign Policy Gamble by Obama at a Moment of Truth

...

For a president whose ambitions to remake the world have been repeatedly frustrated, the possibility of a reconciliation after 36 years of hostility between Washington and Tehran now seems tantalizingly within reach, a way to be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize that even he believed was awarded prematurely. Yet the deal remains unfinished and unsigned, and critics worry that he is giving up too much while grasping for the illusion of peace.

The mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran are not on the clock to secure their legacy.

“Right now, [Obama] has no foreign policy legacy,” said Cliff Kupchan, an Iran specialist who has been tracking the talks as chairman of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. “He’s got a list of foreign policy failures. A deal with Iran and the ensuing transformation of politics in the Middle East would provide one of the more robust foreign policy legacies of any recent presidencies. It’s kind of all in for Obama. He has nothing else. So for him, it’s all or nothing.”

...

An agreement with Iran remains the most promising goal left in a foreign policy agenda that has unraveled since Mr. Obama took office. Rather than building a new partnership with Russia, he faces a new cold war. Rather than ending the war in Iraq, he has sent American forces back to fight the Islamic State, though primarily from the air. Rather than defeating Al Qaeda, he finds himself chasing its offshoots. Rather than forging peace in the Middle East, he said recently that is beyond his reach.

A quick reprise of Obama's misjudgments in the Middle East (Libya, Assad must go, red lines, ISIS as the "junior varsity", and Yemen as a model of success) is here. And now we are expected to trust his judgment about the merits of this nuclear deal? A Bold Prediction - Obama will NOT describe the Iranian nuclear scientists as "the junior varsity".

And how is Iran doing? Back to Mr. Baker:

Since the 1979 Iranian revolution that swept out the Washington-supported shah and brought to power an anti-American Islamic leadership, the country has been the most sustained destabilizing force in the Middle East — a sponsor of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, a supporter of Shiite militias that killed American soldiers in Iraq, a patron of Syria’s government in its bloody civil war, and now a backer of the rebels who pushed out the president of Yemen.

Not to be unduly pessimistic, but Iran is winning, having a lot of success with, well, conventional unconventional warfare. Will the easing of economic sanctions make Iranian sponsorship of these militias and insurgencies more affordable, or less likely? Hmm...

So who needs nukes? During the Cold War standoff in Europe the US (with NATO) had the better army but the Soviets had the bigger one. Consequently, the US would not agree to a "no first use" policy of nuclear weapons in Europe.

In the Middle East today, Iran and Saudi Arabia are ongoing rivals. Iran has four times the population and could surely muster a larger army than the Saudis, if not as technologically advanced. That suggests that the day will come that Saudi Arabia (like Israel) will seek a nuclear deterrent against a numerically superior foe. Unless, of course, they feel comfortable going all-in under the US military shield, which is a faith-based initiative that may seem inadvisable under current US leadership.

April 02, 2015

As the NY Times devotes itself to getting the nation Ready For Hillarity! 2016, Tom Friedman strikes a slightly discordant note while discussing Obama's Mideast "policy":

Obama has said and done some boneheaded things in the Middle East (like decapitating the Libyan regime with no plan for the morning after)...

Wait, wait, wait! Overthrowing Qadaffi was Hillarity!'s Big Idea back in 2011. We hope Republicans set aside Benghazi and encourage questions about the broader issue, to wit, how was it that knocking off Qadaffi with no credible plan to replace him was smart while overthrowing Saddam with no credible plan to replace him was dumb?

SINCE YOU ASK: The theme of the current Friedman column is that China has better governance than the Middle East. And people say he is not a visionary!

However, this may represent progress of a sort, since in times past Mr. Friedman has explained that China's governance model has it all over our tiresome democracy.

April 01, 2015

Here is a delusional article in The Hill explaining that former governor O'Malley (D, MD) is more qualified than either Clinton or Bush to be President.

Qualifications? What??? Democrats are going to nominate a woman or a black and I don't see any blacks on the short list of 2016 candidates. Maybe a middle-aged white guy would be an acceptable VP pick, but President? C'mon, there is history to be made, glass ceilings to be shattered and War on Women to be won.

FWIW, I think there is zero chance of the Republicans nominating two middle-aged white guys, so Joni Ernst of Iowa might want to start prepping for her Palinization as the object of the next two minute hate. And we may have a chance to enjoy listening to the former Obama supporters and the MSM (pardon my redundancy) explaining why Ms. Ernst is too young, has too little time in the Senate and is hopelessly underqualified.